May 2008

May 31, 2008

Earlier this week Obama made a speech in New Mexico, on Memorial Day. Here's an extract:

On this memorial day, as our nation honours its unbroken
line of fallen heroes - and I see many of them in the audience here
today - our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

He sees dead people!

Although there was a bit of online snickering at this mistake, it didn't draw much attention. Now, imagine if Bush had made it. Or McCain. The media and the public would have seen it as evidence of, respectively, Stupidity and Senility.

It's another example of the power of a frame to determine our responses - or lack of responses - to what a politician does or says. Obama's gaffes - for there are a growing number of them - haven't attracted much attention because they don't match up neatly to our conventional assumptions about him. After his latest - the Auschwitz claim - that may start to change.

How might Obama's frame shift? People are unlikely to start thinking Obama is Stupid. They may just start to believe he's Dishonest, as the RNC hope. But I think it's just as likely his gaffes will feed a perception that has been seeded by The Dark Prince himself, Karl Rove.

Rove thinks Obama is lazy, and has said so. He portrays Obama as a man with considerable intellectual and personal gifts who has coasted through life, skimping on the hard work, using his quick mind, easy charm, and perhaps the colour of his skin (Rove doesn't say that, but I get a sense he wants to stoke up a bit of anti-affirmative action sentiment - there may be a drop of racist stereotyping in the tag itself) to bluff his way through.

The danger for Obama is that his mistakes come to be seen as a signal that he's unprepared for the hard work and focused concentration needed for the highest office in the land - and that he's an essentially superficial character.

Between now and Tuesday, three events that may well mark the end of this extraordinary Democratic nomination battle:

Today, in the arid confines of a Marriott hotel meeting room in Washington D.C, the members of the Democratic National Council's Rules and Byelaws Committee will meet to agree a solution to the problem of seating the Michigan and Florida delegations. If that sentence doesn't get your blood pumping, well...I'm not surprised. But it is a crucial step in the resolution of this contest. Michigan and Florida broke the party rules by holding their primaries earlier than they were supposed to because they wanted more influence over the process (why does Iowa get all the attention?). Clinton won both handily (but as nobody was allowed to campaign there, and she was the best-known candidate, that was inevitable). She is now trying to claw the delegates she won in those states back, with the help of lots of lawyers. The DNC's bind is this: it wants the voters in both states to feel that their votes counted - not least because both are key states in November - but they don't want any old state thinking they can get away with such shenanigans. So they're likely to arrive at a compromise, involving awarding half the delegates to the winner, or something like that (for a more detailed elucidation of possible outcomes, go here). The only outcome that might conceivably make a difference to the outcome of the race is if all the delegates are seated, and that, frankly, ain't gonna happen. Anyway, after today, the dust should have settled on this legalistic but crucial question. And Michigan and Florida party leaders can reflect on the fact that if they'd held their primaries as originally arranged, and Clinton had won them as she might well have albeit by smaller margins, then their delegates might have tipped a close contest the other way thus giving them much more influence over the process than before. Ah, hindsight.

On Sunday, Puerto Rico holds its primary. It's a US territory rather than a state and hence it doesn't get to vote in the general. But of course its voters have strong ties to many Hispanic voters on the mainland, and both candidates have spent time and effort there (UPDATE - Obama not so much; see Toby's comment below), despite the fact that Clinton is expected to win handily. Although the delegates she wins in PR won't make much difference at this stage, a huge win could push up Clinton's popular vote total and hence her bargaining power with Obama and the party. She has been helped in this by a momentous endorsement from someone else who was big in the nineties.

On Tuesday, thelast 2008 primarieswill be held. Yes, you may read that sentence again. The two last states are Montana and South Dakota. Obama will win Montana. South Dakota is a closer call, but there aren't many polls to go on - nobody seems to be paying much attention. Whatever happens, Obama will all but declare victory on Tuesday night (he's rumoured to have booked an interesting venue in which to do so).

May 30, 2008

President Clinton will return to South Dakota on Friday, May 30, attending “Solutions for America” events in Spearfish, Mitchell, and Vermillion.

President Clinton will continue campaigning for Hillary on Saturday, May 31 in Elk Point, Canton, Dell Rapids, Flandreau, and Madison. Chelsea Clinton will join him in Dell Rapids.

President Bill Clinton will return to Montana this Sunday, June 1, attending campaign events in Stevensville, Anaconda, Great Falls, and Helena.

On Monday, June 2, President Clinton will attend campaign events in Watertown, Milbank, Sisseton, Webster, Aberdeen, and Sioux Falls.

That's eighteen events in four days; at least four events every day. This, in what most consider to be the dying days of the campaign. And he's not even the candidate. Surely the behaviour of a man a who has rediscovered an old addiction and is revelling in it.

Amongst all the various theories of why the Clintons are continuing to campaign, perhaps the simplest and most convincing one is that they love it.

As the 2008 presidential election draws closer, Democrat Barack Obama has reportedly been working tirelessly with his top political strategists to perfect his looking-off-into-the-future pose, which many believe is vital to the success of the Illinois senator's campaign.

When performed correctly, the pose involves Obama standing upright with his back arched and his chest thrust out, his shoulders positioned 1.3 feet apart and opened slightly at a 14-degree angle, and his eyes transfixed on a predetermined point between 500 and 600 yards away. Advisers say this creates the illusion that Obama is looking forward to a bright future, while the downturned corners of his lips indicate that he acknowledges the problems of the present.

Just caught up with this, and it's fun. It features the American Jeremy Paxman (sort of), Chris Matthews, taking apart a talk radio pundit who is throwing around the word 'appeasement' without knowing what it means. It gets really good about 3:50 in.

May 29, 2008

I don’t run for president because I need any more publicity. I don’t
run for president because I need the adulation or the celebrity.

Usually when Clinton or Obama talk about why they're running for president they do so to contrast their motivation with their opponent's, and I think that's what Hillary is doing here. Reading those remarks reminded me of Bill Clinton's recent suggestion that he and Obama, both raised by single mothers, share some deep psychological traits:

I think I understand him. There are enough similarities in our childhoods and things that I think I get what he is doing.

Perhaps this is the Clintons' joint theory about Obama: that he has the young Bill's desperate need for adulation - to replace the lack engendered by an absent father - without the political substance that the Arkansas Governor had accumulated by 1992.

The New York Times has a profile piece up about McCain's transition from the military to politics. It contains lots of passages like this:

A trip to Asia in late 1978 cemented their bond. Mr. McCain and the two senators stole away from official briefings to stroll in Tokyo’s Ginza district of nightclubs and restaurants, visit the Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok and take a memorable midnight tour of what Mr. Hart remembered as that city’s “light and dark sides.”

Gosh I wonder what the 'dark side' of Bangkok is? I shouldn't imagine, given Gary Hart's reputation for moral rectitude, that those boys got up to anything they wouldn't want to tell their pastor about. McCain later falls under the wing of John Tower, another man famous for his aversion to alcohol and loose women.

In fact, the whole piece is threaded with references to boozing and philandering, made in the usual coy code of the NYT. Now, these years cover the time between McCain's two marriages, and he wasn't an elected politician at the time, and he probably deserved a bit of fun after five years in a prison camp, and so on. But given the kind of character he is, or has been, it makes you wonder if stories of more recent misdemeanours are going to surface during the campaign. In particular, stories of marital infidelity (the NYT nearly but couldn't quite bring itself to break at least one).

If they do, will they hurt him? You'd think they might. Religious conservatives who already have their doubts about him would have another reason to stay home on election day. On the other hand, maybe the odd sex scandal would make him seem younger and more virile?

Rupert Murdoch, normally quite cautious in his public pronouncements on politics, made a bold prediction yesterday: Obama will win the general election. He thinks McCain is too erratic, too ignorant of economics, and has been around in Washington too long to win.

Adam Boulton cautions against the conventional wisdom that Obama has this sewn up. He outlines Clinton's two-pronged strategy: first, hammering home to superdelegates that she is the safer bet in a battle with McCain, based on current polling evidence. Second, challenging the legitimacy of the whole primary process to date (Adam says the Clinton team is drawing up a legal challenge to this effect).

I'm all for unconventional wisdom, but I think Adam's reading of the Clinton strategy is wrong. Even these most ferocious of fighters know the game is up. Do they really envisage a path to the nomination that includes a legal battle with the party, and the savage internecine warfare that would result from an attempt to overthrow the presumptive nominee? I don't think so: the Clintons know that if they lost this battle, as they almost certainly would, both of their reputations would be destroyed in the party for good. Her political future would be over.

No, I think the Clintons are using the two prongs Adam identifies to frame a possible 2012 bid. First, they want everyone to be absolutely clear that We told you so when/if Obama loses to McCain in November. Second, they want the party to change the rules for electing nominees - eliminating caucuses - so that Clinton has a better chance of winning in 2012 (when she might even be up against Obama again).

May 28, 2008

From a piece in this month's New York Review of Books, this story is about McCain's first run for office, in his wife's home state of Arizona:

The McCains lived just outside the Rhodes district, but Cindy's
money ensured that they were able to buy a house in it and move in
immediately. During a primary campaign against three other Republicans,
he was, inevitably, branded a carpetbagger and opportunist. Confronted
with these allegations at a candidates' forum, he delivered a riposte
that would win him the seat and would foreshadow the kind of rhetorical
agility that has so impressed reporters. The point of his zinger of a
last sentence was not lost on his audience even then:

Listen, pal. I spent twenty-two years in the Navy. My
father was in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the
military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of
the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have the luxury,
like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a
nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing other
things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I
lived longest in my life was Hanoi.

Obama has a new ad aimed at Hispanic voters that features him delivering his message in Spanish - and making a pretty convincing job of it. It's a sign of how hard he's prepared to work in order to win over Hispanic voters, who have largely remained loyal to Hillary Clinton throughout the primary process and who form a key constituency in several states that he needs to win in November, including and especially Florida. It's not an entirely risk-free move to have the candidate speak a foreign language; not all Americans like the fact that some of their fellow countrymen speak more Spanish than English. Still, at least he's not speaking French.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has written a book sharply critical of President Bush and his administration. It's particularly notable because McClellan is a long-time Bush loyalist, considered by all the president's team to be a good soldier. His attacks will wound, because they're credible and unexpected. It's not quite Geoffrey Howe and Thatcher but...

Of course, Bush's reputation is already in the toilet. But second-term presidents who have experienced a period of deep unpopularity can recover towards the end of their tenure as the nation starts to remember the good things about the guy who's leaving. Bill Clinton can tell you that. This book means that is (even more) unlikely to happen for Bush.

All of which is bad news for John McCain. The unpopularity of the Republican incumbent is the biggest drag on McCain's popularity. The Democrat strategy for the fall is very simple: tie McCain to Bush. If Bush had been able to pull out some kind of recovery, the potency of this approach would have been diluted.

As it is, the timing of this book is terrible from McCain's point of view. He just held a fundraiser with Bush that he tried very hard to keep quiet - although there was a very brief and weird photo op. The conjunction of these two stories will give the cable shows plenty to chew on in the coming days...

Oprah's favourability ratings and audiences have been in decline since she endorsed Obama and led massive, starry rallies in his support. Some are asking whether the two are connected - did she offend her core female audience, and/or did the very act of making stepping into the arena of party politics diminish her?

The other question, of course, is did her endorsement damage Obama? His failure to expand his coalition in the months post-Iowa, and the stubborn resistance of the white working classes to his pitch are partly to do with the perception that he's a showbiz star fawned over the entertainment elites rather than a politician looking out for the interests of working people. The pictures of Obama and Oprah (and Stevie) on stage together may have have crystallised and hardened that perception.

Somebody has provided some substantiation for the basic hypothesis underlying my little fantasy scenario of a few weeks ago: that if things go as they did in the Democratic primary, Obama may win the popular vote decisively in November, and lose in the electoral college.